Well, what a fun post this is… VAT and the EU. Well I’m not going to bemoan Brexiteers or Remainers. That’s all done and dusted. The problems and hardships caused in the world of trade are not the public’s fault. It’s the politicians on both sides of the Channel or La Manche. And boy, have they made a mess of things. As usual.
So where do we all stand on VAT and trading and buying between the UK and the EU? This is a question that accountants, small business owners, distributors and wholesalers have been asking all over the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world.
This month we see more byzantine regulation come into force from the dark chambers of the EU. Now goods that were once exempt from having VAT applied to them (items under 20€) are no longer exempt. Also intra country selling within the EU, merchants now need to look very carefully at where they are selling and calculating which country they need to pay their collected VAT to. You could argue that makes sense. Countries need to be collecting more VAT to fund politicians elected governments. You make loads of sells in Romania and you sell from Germany, the VAT should go to… Romania. They sure need it.
Digital? Don’t even go there. Not today. It is un utter fiasco selling digital downloads to EU countries.
We’re in the UK. So yes folks, we’re out of the EU club. That means we have to play the agreed UK/EU tax game of insanity. We were about to roll the trouser leg up and cover ourselves in butter on a Wednesday and bend over to pay the punish small businesses and people for having a bit of money to buy things tax VAT when we realised that hey, we’re a new business! We don’t qualify to be VAT registered!
Blue Donut Games is a new limited company that was created from the team who brought you Blue Donut Studios Ltd. All the games in one fun sized bag made sense. Now it makes even more sense.
Because we are currently exempt for VAT registration, we are not allowed to charge VAT. So we cannot charge you for VAT. We do not have a VAT Registration number. Our big sister BDS does and they do have to charge you VAT for their services. But no, not little us.
We hope this will help you in the UK, EU and the rest of Earth who love our games. It’s a dilemma but we hope to grow and know that with success comes punishment from government. We will have to start charging VAT on our games. There is another important EU VAT rule to remember – as it stands at the moment. That is, if we sell to the EU, we too would need to check if we sell more than the threshold per country to then send the VAT to that country. The current threshold (5 July 2021) is 10,000€. So you may be able to help bring in the revenue to your country if you all group together and buy enough products from us to take us over the threshold.
That must come as the most bizarre selling pitch ever, but think what fun you could have and you would be doing your bit for your country.
Ahuh.
Marcus
